Monthly Archives: March 2014

In this part of the AIM IT Project I cover ARGO, which I own shares in but haven’t written up before. It sells for below net current assets and pays a dividend of 10%. I also cover BLZ.L and IMIC.L but see limited investment potential for them to put it mildly.… read more

1972 was an important year for Warren Buffett. It is the year in which he made an investment that was what I consider to be the turning point in his investing career that was inspired by none other than his partner in crime, Charles Munger. Some of you may have already guessed what I’m talking about (perhaps the title gave it away?) – See’s Candy.

This was a company trading at 3x book value and Buffett had likely never paid more than 80% of book value for a company in his life. Yet he saw something new in this investment and was willing to break with all he had known for most of his adult life. I’m going to look at the arguments for these types of businesses that likely persuaded him to do so.… read more

Gold miners have taken a pounding over the last 18 months, and quite rightly. The decade long bull run in the price of gold came abruptly to an end in 2012 with steep declines starting in 2013. Amid the blood and carnage of this sector there are doubtlessly companies that have been dragged down with the masses but don’t deserve such depressed prices. Lucky for me, I found one, Goldplat plc.… read more

Sky People Fruit Juice (NASDAQ:SPU) makes and sells fruit juices in China. The company sells for below net cash yet is profitable and has return on invested capital of over 20%. It is definitely cheap and below intrinsic value on all metrics, but is the company for real or a fraud?… read more

If you aren’t a UK based investor then this article probably wont interest you. But if you are, then you’ll want to read on. The chancellor George Osborne has just announced some of the most major changes to ISAs in a decade. I’m very pleased about them, and along with AIM shares becoming ISA eligible, investors are now in a much better position to wrap their entire portfolio in a tax free ISA.… read more

In this edition of the AIM IT Project I look at three investment companies, St Peter Port Capital (SPPL), Impax Asset Management (IPX) and Trading Emissions (TRE). I don’t predict downside for any of these companies, which makes a change from my usual valuations!… read more

Do you ever get the feeling you’re late to the party? Western Digital stock traded at just over $30 in 2011, and now trades at $86. In the last year alone it is up 100%. So you may wonder why I’m writing about it now. Well on the surface it still appears a somewhat attractive investment in a business trading at an adjusted Free Cash Flow yield of 9% with a historical 18% compound annual growth rate in revenues.… read more

In the AIM IT Project I wrote up a post on CLP. I have since realised there is a glaring error in my analysis which significantly affects my valuation. Lucky for me the margin of safety was so great that it is still an attractive opportunity and I intend to remain long the stock… read more

A few months ago I released a free spreadsheet which collected financial data from the web on a chosen stock and pulled it into a nice summary sheet. I was frustrated when doing this by the problems that occur when trawling the web for data, web pages constantly change name, data moves about and the result is the spreadsheet doesn’t work as fluently as I would have liked and continually has errors.

I have developed a new version which uses a professional data feed. Please try it out (it’s free) and let me know what you think. I have tried to pull together the most comprehensive financials data source on the market.… read more

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